Is there a Pandora for eBooks?

June 14, 2014 6:47 PM

I'm looking for a service/app/website to help me discover new [e]books to read - a little like how pandora works for new music. Ideally I could enter an book and get lists of 'similar' books. In this case similar might be genre, author, series, plot details, setting. Other functionality I'd love would be to replicate the book-store experience of browsing shelves (especially the New Release section) to find books.

I'm semi ashamed to say that I actually go to B&N (which is why I'm not completely ashamed) and browse the shelves, then instead of buying the book there I save it in an amazon wishlist to get online later.

posted by Long Way To Go to Shopping (9 answers total)

Oyster ?
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 6:49 PM on June 14, 2014

Best answer: Bookish is an option. Goodreads and Librarything also have recommendation features. Your local library might have a subscription to Novelist, which is awesome as it does tag books for setting, pace, etc. And of course you can always ask your local public librarian.
posted by wsquared at 7:12 PM on June 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

While not always new books, Manybooks.net and Feedbooks.com are my two go-to places for free e-books, both have fairly decent search functions.
posted by ZureaL at 8:42 PM on June 14, 2014

There used to be The Book Genome Project, but it has closed down. Sadly it seems they just couldn't get a business model that worked, or a buyout. (or they did and now can't talk about it)
posted by Sophont at 10:26 PM on June 14, 2014

LivePlasma has music, book and movie recommendations based on what you search for. I can't speak for how well it works with books.
posted by Brodiggitty at 3:38 AM on June 15, 2014

Have you tried Gnod Books? I've used Gnod for music---you plug in the names of a few groups/artists you like, and wham!--a network of other musicians you might like populates. I'd imagine the books version works the same way.
posted by trampoliningisfun at 12:12 PM on June 15, 2014

Best answer: goodreads. after you've populated it with books you've read and rated them you will get a ton of recs. there are also user lists and stuff like that. i've found a TON of books through goodreads.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 3:36 PM on June 15, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks, folks. Goodreads seems to work quite well at least at first blush.
posted by Long Way To Go at 10:45 PM on June 15, 2014

Library Thing has a wonderful recommendation engine, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:17 PM on June 16, 2014